Ted Cruz, Rand Paul team up with Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand on military sexual assault measure

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand recently garnered Republican support from Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul on a bill that would change the prosecution system for major military crimes.

Gillibrand’s bill would effectively remove the chain of command from sexual assault investigations and allow trained military prosecutors to decide which cases to try.

The New York senator said that victims don’t trust the chain of command and that a system of objectivity is needed in the military.

Gillibrand’s proposal has met with stiff resistance from the Pentagon brass and influential senators including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Conservative support from Paul and Cruz seems likely to bolster the bill and may help Cruz, a hard-charging partisan, demonstrate how he can work across party lines on serious issues.

Paul stated that he and Gillibrand spoke about the bill and modified it to make it stronger. The only thing that he sees standing in the way of this bill is the status quo.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, also a cosponsor of Gillibrand’s bill, said that the status quo is not working. Sexual assault is a law enforcement issue and individuals need access to justice, said Grassley.

After a markup of the Defense Authorization bill in the Senate Armed Services Committee, Cruz showed his support for Gillibrand’s argument:

“I am going to be voting against the chairman’s amendment. And I am going to vote against it because I was persuaded by the argument that Sen. Gillibrand presented in this committee a few moments ago… I think she made a powerful and effective argument that the lack of reporting is driven by a fear of not having an impartial third party outside the chain of command in which to report a sexual assault.”

When Cruz entered the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, he was undecided how he would vote, but said that he was persuaded by Gillibrand’s exceptionally passionate advocacy.

Despite efforts in the past to prevent assault, the “most persistent problem is an unwillingness and inability to report these crimes,” said Cruz.

The Texas senator stated that every senator is opposed to rape and sexual assault, and that commanders in the military want to see this problem go away, but this problem has persisted “despite good-faith repeated efforts.”

Many individuals who reported sexual assault in the military also claimed that they faced retaliation. Gillibrand said her proposal is nonpartisan and meets the needs of the victims, creates transparency, and accountability. By taking sexual assault investigations out of the chain of command, Gillibrand hopes that victims will have hope and increased accountability within the military.

At a press conference on Tuesday, cosponsors of the bill referenced a number of American allies that have implemented similar policies which resulted in improved reporting.

According to Cruz, this bill acts as a “commonsense approach to fixing our military and making it stronger.”